Operational Risk Management

For the financial services industry, risk has always been an inherent part of doing business. But in recent years, corporate wrongdoing, market uncertainty and turbulent capital markets have put the dangers of risk – and the consequences of poorly managing it – in the spotlight. The continuing explosion in transaction volumes and the demand for automation and speed have escalated the cost of risk. So has an emerging regulatory climate that demands new levels of control and visibility into risk – and holds your board and executive team personally accountable for it.

In the Spotlight Gartner positions SAS in the Leaders Quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Operational Risk Management Software for Financial Services. Read the full report.

Yet in the face of these pressures, many financial institutions still operate under a silo approach in which business units maintain their own data, analytics and assumptions for risk management – frequently inconsistently. Even if they could be consistently applied across the enterprise, traditional risk systems aren't equipped to capture complex interdependencies among a multitude of risk factors that span geographies, departments and lines of business. As a result, organizations often end up chasing "phantom" risks that either aren't likely or aren't detrimental – while overlooking insidious and preventable losses.

Doing business is inherently risky. Understanding and controlling that risk shouldn't be.

SAS recognizes the growing need for financial institutions to measure and manage operational risk in a scientific way – not just for regulatory compliance purposes, but also for making sound business decisions. Developed on the premise that risk can be statistically modeled, just as market and credit risk have been, SAS OpRisk Management is part of the flexible SAS Business Analytics Framework. Three key components comprise SAS OpRisk Management:

SAS® OpRisk Monitor, a Web-based application that collects, manages, tracks and reports information about operational loss events, key risk indicators, risk-assessment maps and control-assessment scores. Download the OpRisk Monitor fact sheet(PDF) SAS® OpRisk VaR, a sophisticated, yet user-friendly analytic VaR (Value at Risk) model that enables users to slice, dice, drill-down, adjust, trend and plot operational loss data at will, following a fully transparent, intuitive and sequential process. Download the OpRisk VaR product brief(PDF) SAS® OpRisk Global Data, a comprehensive database of external loss data that enriches the statistical sample used for modeling, documenting more than 18,000 publicly reported operational loss events of $100,000 or more. Download the OpRisk Global Data product brief(PDF)

These components equip financial institutions with the tools needed to measure and manage operational risk in conformity with industry best practices and the New Basel Accord (Basel II). In alignment with the approaches used by top-tier risk advisory firms, SAS OpRisk Management enables financial institutions to:

• Establish a systematic framework for capturing risk factors and relationships.
• Assess risk exposures and impacts across the entire organization.
• Optimize capital reserves by improving the internal control environment.
• Integrate external loss and severity databases into the internal loss database.
• Share intelligence through scorecarding, notification and custom reports.
• Provide full visibility into the sources and logic behind report results.
• Comply with national and international regulatory requirements.

With powerful data management, analytics and regulatory reporting and disclosure capabilities, SAS OpRisk Management helps you optimize capital allocation while mitigating risks in all areas of your organization.